


The Belgravia Pieces

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slash, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does Irene Adler see when she looks at Sherlock Holmes and John Watson?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Belgravia Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed so apologies for any mistakes! Two 221b pieces and a ficlet, all centered around "A Scandal in Belgravia". Written for the prompts "And","She", "Light" at sherlock100. Original entry [over here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/52915.html#cutid1) at my Livejournal.

  
***She***  
  
It isn’t her naked body, rakish and tempting, that gives John pause. It's her naked face, wiped clean from worldliness and make-up, sleeping on Sherlock’s pillow. Later, too, in their sitting room, the face still naked but wide awake and playful. She stands barefooted, her eyes at the level of Sherlock’s breastbone; her hair strong, plain and longish, a touch disorderly down her back—exactly like the girl’s who works at the station’s _Boots_.  
  
That’s when John feels it.  
  
It’s as if someone’s flicking his belly button from the inside. He can’t name it, not then; it’s all happening too quickly. But one day very soon after she’s gone, after she’s out of their lives completely, he spots Sherlock’s blue gown hanging at the back of the bathroom door. And as the memory transforms into the image of her naked body as it would have been hiding under there, enveloped in all that blue, so does the image shift and ripple — skin changes to skin, muscles change to muscles, dips change to dips—but those of another. And _then_ they all merge together into a third image that flashes through John’s mind and leaves him stunned, lips barely parted, eyes unblinking, hands hanging limply by his sides.  
  
Two naked bodies, two naked faces. There isn’t a place for a third. “Boring.”  
  
~o~  
  
 ***Light***  
  
Her phone is the first thing she touches when she wakes up, fingers sullenly protesting for moving too soon. The need that shushes them is the same that ordered them to action. Not the need to establish connection with her security, though. She’s seeking to see his face first thing; in broad daylight it’s even more compelling. She’s used to being breathless at this hour no more than she’s used to having a man’s face as the thief of her breath.  
  
Mostly, she hopes against all experience that during her sleep words, not just images, have frenzied the circuits of her phone. Or just _a_ word: _Yes._  
  
His silences are his decline. She doesn’t know why he declines; she isn’t done unravelling him. The thought gives her fingers the creative flair they need to slide between her legs.  
  
Not used to catering to her own needs, either. There is sweetness in that — a reminder of youth, just like he is.  
  
A blog gives her a hint. She takes advantage of technology, but when it comes to people she prefers flesh, taste. Yet it’s a laptop screen that illuminates her — the vacancy has been filled. Permanent dinner partner found, don’t apply within. Sherlock Holmes has settled. Into a threesome, apparently: him, John Watson, and their shared oblivion.  
  
Of all things, a blog.  
  
~o~  
  
 ***And***  
  
Her voice startles John, the echo from the bathroom giving it an extra piquant trill.  
  
“Can I ask you a question?”  
  
John hesitates for a second—maybe he can pretend he’s not in the kitchen. But something makes him move into the corridor.  
  
“Erm…sure,” he says to the half-open bathroom door.  
  
She comes out, fingers carding through her damp hair.  
  
“How do you manage it?” she says, tone hushed and curious. “Living with him?”  
  
John quickly lifts and drops his shoulders. “Don’t tell him I said that, but it’s actually not that bad. You get used to it, I s’ppose, and—“  
  
“No, I mean… _him_.” Her hand draws an indefinable — a sensual vertical line through the air.  
  
John frowns. “I don’t understand.”  
  
She looks at him, pale and beautiful, her eyes even more shrewd with their bare eyelashes. “He's so sexy,” she murmurs and John suddenly knows why people pay her for…whatever they pay her for.  
  
Then her words hit him. But before he has a chance to say anything, she slides past him and into the kitchen. John follows and finds her still, standing with her back to the fridge. She is looking at Sherlock, who’s talking on his mobile by the fireplace, one hand illustrating his words as if the wrist is the centre of a windmill. He is staying in one place, but stepping from one foot to the other, then again — and something fulminates in John’s belly. Maybe it’s the familiarity of the movement; maybe it’s the abrupt heat up John’s neck at the realization with whom he’s sharing the view. It’s as if her very presence gives the situation a new, ambiguous sheen.  
  
“Look at him,” she says. “I want to _have_ him.” She pauses, drawing breath. “He is just so…pristine. I keep picturing his face as I touch him.”  
  
John swallows and tears his eyes away, looks at her. Her face is thrilled, enraptured, hard and soft at the same time. Her nostrils flare as she turns to him again. “How do you manage?” she repeats.  
  
He frowns again. “Well, that’s not a—I mean, like I said, I’m not—“  
  
“Yes, not gay,” she says, brightly. “Does it matter?”  
  
John feels his features stretch into amused incredulity. She watches him, some small, benevolent mockery in the curve of her mouth.  
  
“You poor thing. Still in denial? Look at him,” she says emphatically.  
  
It’s John’s nostrils’ turn to flare. “I don’t have to. I know what I’ll see. I’ll see my flatmate and my friend.”  
  
“And?” she prompts.  
  
John feels his temper get the better of him. “And? Fine, and. Not just my friend — one of my closest friends and one of the—the most brilliant man I know, who considers me his partner and that's all I—I don’t know why everyone needs to see something more! We’re—”  
  
“No, no,” she puts a finger on his lips and silences him at once. “That would be something less. What you have—that’s more. The rest…” She searches his face, taking longer with his eyes. He could feel himself still breathing heavily, and loudly, too, since he’s doing it only through his nose. Her finger drops and she smiles. “My mistake.”  
  
If she’s waiting for John to say something, he doesn’t deliver.  
  
“Shall we?” She raises her eyebrows.  
  
***  
  
John brushes the patch of skin right next to Sherlock’s pubic hair by the fold where the leg and torso join. His fingers go over the skin reverently; his lips follow, impatient, needing more proof of something they should have bloody well written a dissertation on. While he presses an open mouthed kiss on the spot, his left hand’s thumb draws circles over the mirror spot on Sherlock's hip. Sherlock’s entire abdomen tenses as he gasps; with his peripheral vision John could see long, fine fingers crease the pale lilac linen under them.  
  
He lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s face.  
  
“Look at you,” he whispers, and remembers Irene Adler.


End file.
